I am happy to announce that my painting "Sawtooth Hailstorm" was accepted into the California Art Club 100th anniversary Gold Medal Juried Exhibition, which opens saturday at the Pasadena Museum of Art. I must say that I am very excited to see this show, including the work of Richard Schmid , who I admire greatly and am hoping to meet. I am very honored to have had my work included in this show.

I had the double good fortune to attend the Society of Illustrators Editorial opening a few weeks ago, where I ran into SooJin Buzelli, who was preoccupied with the problem of depicting New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg as a potential hero- in the event that his proposed public pension reforms are enacted and are sucessful. In my case, an example of being in the right place at the right time, I was more than happy to be of assistance.

King of the world!

Once I returned to my studio 3000 miles away, I started to work out some thumbnails. One of the great things (among many) of working with SooJin, is that she has the ability to understand rough sketches for what they are...
I started out thinking of Bloomberg being rewarded for saving the finances of the city, and possibly by extention, the country, the world...
One of the first ideas was Bloomberg as a king. Later I thought of him a a dragonslayer, battling the pension problem....

Maybe as an Angel?

SooJin and I both agreed that this was probably best- a tickertape parade!

A random person poses for the body

I was able to get a little extra time by showing the painting in progress, here it is a few hours in...

Roughed in

finished art one day later

Detail. I try to keep some freshness in the image by stopping before I start to overwork. Always a balancing act...

As it happens I owe both SooJin and Chris an extra thanks because last week they very graciously allowed a group of CCA students to visit them in their studio home. As it happens we were there the day that the magazine had "gone live", so the students were impressed that not only did I know such luminaries but actually worked in the same rarified air as them. (more on this trip in an upcoming post).

Im back in California again now, ready to get to work and get things done. Thanks again to Chris and SooJin for the great studio visit, and thanks again to SooJin for the chance to do this piece. Covers are valuable real estate, i appreciate being entrusted with it!
Please visit the Ai-CIO site to see the magazine, filled with the work of many great lillustrators including Calef Brown, Marco Wagner, Johnatan Burton, A. Richard Allen, Grady McFerrin, Maxwell Holyoke-Hirsch, Katherine Streeter, Frank Stockton, Jay Caybuay, and (last but not least, and I hope I'm not missing someone) Chris Buzelli. Check it out!